stevesbets

They say almost everything looks better in hindsight and I have come to believe this is definitely true.

I lived in Los Angeles for about a year and a half prior to moving back to Philly in September and I loved my time there…I think. I recently have randomly been reminded of my time there in 3 different ways.  I was watching the most recent episode of Phil Laak and Antonio Esfandiari’s show, “I bet you”, A hilarious half hour show where the two high stakes pros and best friends make wacky prop bets. Throughout the show they panned over the Hollywood and Highland complex, the place that houses the Mann Chinese theater, the Kodak theater and the hollywood walk of fame. I went there multiple times during my time living in Pasadena.

Secondly, I am currently reading a book of short stories called poker fiction which includes one by my favorite author Michael Connelly. In his story, a large element of the crime takes place at Commerce Casino. I probably went to Commerce once a week through my year and a half in Pasadena and I greatly enjoyed playing live poker there, much more so than any other casino I have been too. The images that the book evoked made me miss my weekly trips through the perfect LA weather to the casino with the top down gearing up to play.

Thirdly and most bizarrely, A random late night infomercial popped on where they were doing interviews in an outdoor mall.  I quickly realized that it was set in the paseo colorado (http://www.paseocoloradopasadena.com/) the outdoor mall (such things do not exist on the east coast in quite the same way) on which my apartment (www.terracesapartmenthomes.com) rested. Seeing my old domicile on screen was nothing new as it was featured in a scene from “Knocked up” and is across the street from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium where American Idol does “Hollywood Week” every year (the name Hollywood week being a total misnomer since they actually send the contestants to this auditorium in Pasadena, a solid 20 minute drive from Hollywood). Despite the frequency, the combination of seeing the Paseo along with the other two references really struck a chord with me and made me miss life in Pasadena.

When I think more clearly on the issue, I know that there were many problems there. First and foremost, my family and nearly all of my friends were across the country. Aside from my time at the casino I spent the bulk of my time in my apartment alone and fairly bored. When I was there I very much missed being back in Philly, I almost felt homesickness comparable with Will Smith when he first moves to the Banks’ mansion in Bel-Air, I just wanted a Philly cheese steak with the grease tearing a hole in the bag.

This academic knowledge flies in the face of the nostalgia I’m feeling and the only way to reconcile it is to understand that things are simply always better in hindsight. The bad parts melt away and all is left is a perfect fake image marked on the mind for posterity. It makes me wonder about our history books…

PS I have more to say on the religious debate but I didn’t want to make my blog entirely about that subject so I’ll save it for next time and I promise once again to post more frequently

I received mixed reviews on my last blog which frankly shocked me. I pretty much cannot believe people disagree with what I wrote. I was most shocked when one of my good friends said, “Stick to writing about poker”. When I inquired further as to which thought he disagreed with he said, “Many people have thought way more about the subject than you”. This response comes from one of the smartest people I know and the utter lack of sense in the statement is shocking to me. OF COURSE people have thought more and written more on the subject than me, that would basically be true for just about any subject (except maybe pokerstars heads up sit and goes). Does this mean that no one except the foremost expert in the world has any right to comment on a subject? To me this shows how incredibly smart people may not think clearly on the subject of religion.

A friend of mine who works for the city of Philadelphia informed me today of a real situation that relates to what I wrote about. Apparently there is currently a call for a Federal law against same sex marriage and the constituents are calling for him to get behind it. Their main argument is that it is god’s law and of course this is impossible to rebuke. As soon as they turn to a real world argument though the logic can actually be dealt with and a rebuttal can be attempted. The argument offered against same sex marriage is that it would pave the way for 2 drag queens to adopt a child, and how incredibly awful would that be?!?! There are many obvious retorts but I will go with the one that I can most personally speak about.

I worked in a school in the heart of West Philadelphia while I was in college at Penn. This school had about 40 kids to a class, and a teacher that spent the vast majority of her time trying to make sure that all the kids were accounted for (and she had been the recipient of many awards for top teacher in the area). They had one child who was deemed the technological expert because he was the only one that knew how to turn on the antiquated computers that sat on one of the tables in the classroom. I worked in the 8th grade in which over half the students had already seen someone shot and over half of the girls were already mothers, some of more than one child. These students could not turn on a computer or write coherently, and had almost all been a victim of some sort of major psychological trauma yet our society makes no laws against them being parents. (And I’m not saying we should or shouldn’t). How can anyone argue that in every case or even most cases of drag queens adopting a child that this child will be worse off than the oldest of 7 children of a 10th grade student who is charged with taking care of his siblings by the time he’s 6 years old because his mother is busy either finishing high school, working a minimum wage job or worse.

To legislate on the basis that any group as a whole would make unfit parents is totally absurd in our society today. Maybe, just maybe even the 10th grade single mother will be a decent parent. It’s really all a matter of odds. But hey, god’s law reigns supreme, so many people say our society’s laws should be based on it.

I just saw a hilarious old episode of Roseanne in which her youngest son DJ started randomly going to church and asked all sorts of questions about the morality of his family. He was asking his father Dan about the denominations of his family (they are more or less atheist in the show) and Dan replies, ” well my parents were Lutheran, Roseanne’s catholic, and us, well, we’re just good people” This prompted a hysterical laugh from the laugh track. While I don’t think the point of the laugh was that the idea of having morals while not being religious is absurd, it got me thinking about it anyway.

It is a very common belief that morality comes from god and the reason something is right or wrong is because god says so. Further, many believe that anyone who does not believe in god does not have much of a moral code. I give far more credit to the moral code of those who do not derive it from god and are “just good people” than those who follow “god’s word”.

When someone believes that morality comes from god, pretty much anything goes. Often without the insight or the desire to examine their beliefs, these people will accept what religious authorities tell them quite literally as gospel. They do not need to understand nor justify their beliefs to anyone because they come from the highest possible authority.  God has long been used as a justification for many unspeakable evils. I would not presume to argue that evil people would not find other reasons to do evil things if they were unable to use their god as justification, but it certainly does make it easier for them to still believe they are “good people”. After all, if two people that trust in gods moral authority argue over who is right when one says to blow up innocent people and the other says not to, just how in depth can the argument be when one yells, “god says to do so” and the other says, “no you got it all wrong”.

I have also heard the argument made that people are generally better when the feel they are answering to someone greater than themselves. There is no real way to measure this outside of experience, but in my (admittedly limited) human experience, some of the biggest scumbags are the truest believers (and being around the poker world offers some unique access to scumbags).

On the flip side, a moral person who derives his morals through logic and reason often has a much more complex thought process. I personally have always appreciated the golden rule of treating others how you would want to be treated, but this is fairly amorphous and I learned what I think is a far better way to reach similar values in college. I took an ethics class where we read a number of great writers, I apologize for not giving credit to the author of this thought process but I can’t remember his name. He argued that if humans form a society, unethical behavior will naturally be forced out. Take stealing as an example, in a society in which stealing is fine and accepted, people will naturally snatch the belongings as others. People won’t like having their hard earned possessions taken so they will form into bands that protect each other from such theft. These bands will become new societies in which stealing is immoral.

To me the thought process I just described offers far greater depth and is a far more interesting springboard for discussion than the classic discussion ender, “god says so”.

On a separate but related note I just finished watching this season of the Celebrity Apprentice. Stephen Baldwin was one of the contestants and he was hilarious to watch. He is someone who’s life was so messed up that he turned to religion for help. He became a born again Christian celebrity minister of sorts who I understand has quite a following. One of the highlights of the show for me was Stephen’s blank stare and vacant laugh in response to almost anything anybody said to him. If you are looking for  someone to take life advice from, choosing him seems totally absurd. If you would like a bit of further entertainment, I encourage you to check out the following link that has a list of Stephen Baldwin’s hobbies:

http://www.stephenbaldwin.com/hobbies.htm

Sorry for all the pseudo-intellectualism, my next blog will be about poker

If like most online poker players, you wish there were an easier way to move money from one site to another, there is now a solution. www.chipwalkers.com is a very secure, reliable way to move money across poker sites, I highly recommend it.

Once again sorry I haven’t blogged in awhile, Ive been very busy and will get back to it soon

Wow.

60 minutes considering absolute poker story

Nat just alerted me to this on AIM. This could easily be terrible for online poker.

For now I’m done wandering around Copenhagen and London and I’m back home in Philly. I had fun in Europe, but as the old saying goes, “it’s great to travel but it’s even better to come home.” Since arriving back I have had a Business school interview, attended my grandmother’s 21st birthday party (figure that one out) and I have been working on an article for BLUFF magazine. I can’t share the content of my article here but I assure you that it is both poker related and worth checking out (a paradoxical statement much of the time) so pick up the next issue of BLUFF.

Poker forums are a funny thing. The major ones (twoplustwo, pocketfives) have always seemed to me like a sort of grotesque online fraternity filled with 17 year olds. Usually about 2% of the posts offer some sort of interesting thought or insight while the other 98% are pointless one liners such as “lol”,  a repeat of someone elses line, some idiotic forum jargon with no relation the post it is supposedly in response to such as [x] AKo FTW IMO (ace king offsuit for the win in my opinion), or some scathing criticism of anyone and everyone. Of the 2% of posts that are decent, probably 95% of them come from well known respected “posters” most of whom are online pros. There is definitely something valuable in being one of these respected posters. They build solid reputations and become well liked among all the teenage fan boys. On the more practical side, someone like Taylor Caby was able to parlay his forum popularity into a powerhouse poker training website. From a business perspective I regret avoiding forums for most of my career (evidenced by my post count of 24 on 2p2 under my name TGSB).

I always told myself that I had good reason for refusing to take part in the mountain of idiocy, but I have come to realize that due to the backwards way the world works, it’s sometimes necessary to do pointless things. Exhibit A in this case would be the phenomenon of post count. My friend shrew posts on 2p2 all the time. He NEVER offers any sort of insight and almost always just repeats someone or says lol. Despite this, my guess is most people would give something he posts far more credence than something I posted simply because his post count is four figures vs my two figures. My friends and I joke that all it would take to scam millions from the poker economy is to join a forum, make like 10000 posts about ANYTHING, and suddenly you would be the most trusted person in the world. Even writing about the respect that a figure like post count brings to people makes me a little bit angry at how backwards our society is. I’d imagine that in many walks of life the one listened to the most is simply the one who speaks the most; This is totally unacceptable to me. Now that I have ranted about forums, I would highly recommend everyone read through this thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=147782

The original poster in that thread, stealthmunk, is a 19 year old degenerate who I have played against in long high stakes no limit sessions on many occasions. Given the crazy prop bet he made, my guess is our life philosophies are very different even if our love of gambling is not.

NOTE: In the second to last sentence I almost wrote “played with” instead of “played against” funny that while they are virtually synonyms in this context the latter far better represents the reality of the situation

I have never told anyone the specifics of the story I’m about to write, I don’t know why I am putting it now in a public domain, but here it goes.

Three years ago yesterday I woke up in my dorm room shrugged off sleep and went to play the Saturday online poker tournaments on partypoker and pokerstars. My girlfriend was at dance practice for the day so I intended to play poker most of the day straight through to dinner time. My mom interrupted me with a phone call asking what I was doing. The conversation was fairly standard, but there was an edge in her voice and I sensed there was something just a little bit off, she asked questions she doesn’t normally ask and eventually wished me a good day and hung up. Awhile later she called back and acted VERY strangely before hanging up and I began to get nervous. I called my dad’s office to try and gather what was going on and became nervous when it went to voicemail only to be momentarily relieved minutes later when I remembered that it was Saturday. I called my dad’s cell phone and it rang a few times before being answered, but no voice came on to the other end. After about 10 seconds I faintly heard my mom’s voice in the background and the phone clicked off.

A few minutes later, I was still in two partypoker 1k single table tournaments when my world collapsed. and I got through to my mom again, in a fairly normal tone she said, “Steven, is Jon or Bree or anyone else around?” When I said no and told her she was making me nervous she suddenly broke into tears and said, “Your dad died this morning of a heart…”

I have no memory of the rest of her words or the conversation, I just started screaming. As the walls collapsed in on me I felt like there was a chance I was in a dream or some sort of alternate unreal reality and tried to gather myself to figure out what was happening. A few minutes later is my first memory and I realized that as I was screaming at the top of my lungs I was still playing the partypoker 1k sit and goes going all in every hand. To this day I have no idea why I was still playing or why I did what came next, but someone in the chat was making fun of my play (I think I was going all in every hand) and I declared to the table, “My father just died”. People at the table made some sort of remarks only one of which I remember, “If that’s true why are you still playing”. Its amazing what happens when you don’t know where you are or what you’re doing and can’t comprehend how everything you know has suddenly changed. When the other player said this and it came to me that quitting was an option, I dropped the mouse and my GA heard my screaming and came to see what was going on. Somehow over the next couple hours I ended up in my sister’s room at Penn, then my house in the suburbs.

Flash forward three years. By way of pure chance, I I found myself in a religious institution on Feb 26 yesterday for probably the first time since my father’s funeral. Luke and I were visiting St Paul’s Cathedral and resting after walking up and down all the steps when a priest came to the pulpit and recited a prayer of some sort. Afterwards he said something like, “I’ll be around all day if anyone wants to talk to me about anything”. My aversion to organized religion is fairly well known, but for a very brief moment I even considered going to talk to him just to see what he might say about my story. In that brief moment I understood why many people resort to faith without science nor proof, because perhaps something so terrible happened that there is no other way they can understand it or make it dissipate in their heads. Being unable to change who I am though, and being unsure I would want to anyway, Luke and I finished our visit to St Paul’s and left without another religious word.

Through circumstance I haven’t been with my family for the last two “anniversary’s” of February 26 but I can’t say I fully regret that. Some days aren’t worth remembering.

I have now been in London approximately 24 hours , and i have seen many of the “important” touristy sites. Last afternoon we went by the tower of london and London Bridge until the pouring started and we headed back to the hotel. For dinner we went to Lester Square which was an area I was very impressed with. Lit up like Vegas and bustling like Manhattan, it was a vibrant place to hang out even on a Sunday night.

This morning we went by Buckingham Palace to witness the changing of the guard. We agreed that the white house needs a dog and pony show of that magnitude. Even though it was a random Monday morning, the crowd was insane to watch some soldiers march around. The USA could make a fortune to finance their government spending.

Next was Westminster Abbey which was awe inspiring, when I depart life I want to go with a sculpture of me on top of my tomb like the people laid to rest in Westminster. I was disappointed that they didn’t allow photos inside of the church. I don’t have a really strong understanding of anything holy.

After the Abbey Luke and I were walking along the Thames looking over at the eye of London (which looks like a giant Ferris Wheel).  I noted that the wall was very low on the bridge we were traversing and we joked about how much we would need to be paid to jump into the river. Luke mentioned that there would be a good chance of survival as opposed to leaping off the golden gate bridge. He went on to tell me some interesting tales of the suicide culture of the golden gate bridge. Over 1000 people have jumped from it. As the number approached 1000, a local radio station set up shop on the bridge to track the count to 1000 suicides, announcing what the number was up to over the airwaves. They apparently even offered a reward of like 10 cases of beer to the family of the 1000th jumper. I was pretty shocked that such indifference could be shown to all of these deaths. About 3 or 4 of the jumpers survived due to hitting the water in just the right way. When interviewed after the fact, to a man they said that the instant they jumped they immediately regretted the decision. This is a fairly notable phenomenon. These people were so depressed that they chose to end their life AND actually followed through with it, but as soon as the decision was irreversible they changed their mind. This as is close as we can get to talking with the dead. Let that be a lesson to any of you contemplating suicide out there.

A few other notable observations about London.  Everything is obviously insanely expensive right down to daily internet access at the hotel which is 15 pounds (30 dollars roughly). Online poker is advertised all over the place including on subways and on billboards. The USA really needs to open its doors to online poker advertising, lets put a big full tilt logo in place of the cup o noodles in time square so we could watch online poker blow up to never before seen heights. One thing I forgot to mention about EPT Copenhagen was that there was an insanely large media presence there. I would say there was roughly 4 times the media there than at a standard WPT stop, the Euros just love poker. Back to London, it reminds me of New York City and I really like that, tons to do and eat, but then the added perk of legalized casino gambling and sportsbetting (though I haven’t placed a bet yet). The abundant William Hill sports betting parlors are in stark contrast to USA’s absurd stand on everything gambling related. We have yet to figure out if the rake here is as exorbitant as the rake in the Danish poker games.  Overall I really like this city, I could definitely live here and I can’t say that about most places.

I’ve been in Denmark for a few days so far and there are a few things I figure are worthy of remark. Firstly, both Copenhagen and London are obscenely expensive. They are both above new york city on the list of most expensive cities worldwide, combine that with the dollar being totally tanked and prices are more outrageous than most people can imagine. A few examples(i know those who read my blog are mathematically gifted so i’ll let you do the conversions, 1 pound is about 2 dollars, and 1 dollar is about 5 Kroners): in the London airport I got a burger, fries and garlic bread for the low price of 25 pounds. My friend and I went to lunch in Copenhagen yesterday at a small italian place where we split a small pizza and each got a small appetizer for the very reasonable price of 368 Kroners. Dominos pizza delivers to our hotel room for the price of 125 Kroners per medium pizza. Last but not least, a 5 minute cab ride will clock in at 100 Kroners.

On the subject of cabs, nearly every cab that we’ve seen so far is a mercedes benz, not like an old trashy one either, brand new, detailed benz’s. When I asked the cab driver last night how they all have mercedes’ he smiled and said, “we like mercedes”

On the gambling front, I busted towards the end of day 1 of the EPT event. They started us with 10,000 chips as opposed to the current WPT trend of starting with 20 or 30k chips so the structure moved the tournament along pretty fast. There were two day 1s with 230 people each, when I busted there was about 95 people left in my day1. So i made it kind of far but it was all for naught as a pretty sick turn card crushed my EPT dreams.

Casino Copenhagen in our hotel is tauted as the biggest and greatest hotel in all of Northern Europe. It is very very different from any casino i can imagine in the USA. Men are required to wear jackets, there is and 85 Kroner entry fee for the privilege of gambling, there are no free drinks, they are open only from 2pm to 4am. At 3pm yesterday there were a total of 4 tables open in the whole casino, 2 blackjack and 2 roulette. In the blackjack games they have just about every rule possible to hurt the player, and a tiny max bet of 2000 Kroners. Additionally, it is expected for players to tip 10% of their original bet anytime they get blackjack and they tell you so on the signs by the blackjack games. The poker games they spread are no less ridiculous. Since it is tournament time they are spreading games like 25 50 nl/plo (all games are in Kroners), 50 100 nlh and 50 100 plo. The rake on these games is 5% per pot with a max of a whopping 150 Kroners per pot!! Needless to say, if there were an aggressive, wild 9 handed plo game at the 25 50 level, the house would probably have most of the money after 12 hours of play.

The city of Copenhagen sort of looks like a fairy tale with colorful interesting buildings, twisty towers and old churches. It is dreary and cold every day at this time of year but apparently the summer sports a sun that is up until 11pm every day and parties around the clock. Luke and I had a blackjack dealer yesterday who looked exactly like Miranda from Sex and the City and we inquired about the prices of apartments in the swanky area of town near the Queens house (we witnessed the changing of the guard). She said that a 1000 sq foot apartment may run between 20 and 30k Kroners. More expensive than Manhattan! They call diet coke coca cola light, and they use coke zero as an equal substitute for it. Every 7 11 is well stocked with all sorts of pastries, many of which are unrecognizable to my American eye.

I converted some Dollars into Kroners at the train station yesterday and the clerk warned me to beware of pick pockets as she dispensed the money. I felt no need to beware since I feel far safer here than in most cities in the US. As my friend Luke put it, “In America you may be killed for your air jordans, that just doesn’t happen here”

Today we’re going across the bridge to Sweden to check out Malmo,  seeing the twisted tower designed by Calatrava interests us. Maybe I can dream that one day I’ll have the 30 million required to buy one of the cubes in the new building he’s designing in Manhattan. That’s all for now, I’ll give more updates later.

I’m sitting at a bar in the Newark NJ airport waiting for my plane to depart for londons heathrow airport.This woman just tried to walk with a drink out of the bar and the bartender told her that she had to stay inside with the glass, she gave the bartender a nasty eye roll. Why the meanness for just doing her job?

I’m getting to Copenhagen in a roundabout way, flying virgin atlantic to London at which point I have 5 hours to get my bags, change terminals to british airways, and check in for my flight from London to Copenhagen. On the way back I’ll spend a few days in London, hopefully with cash in my pocket if the tournament goes well.  My friend Luke (Lukekim.blogspot.com) is flying from Vegas to join me for this trip so props to him for coming along. If anyone is going to be in Copenhagen or London drop me a line, also if you have any good ideas for things to do in either place let me know.

I’ve gotten a bunch of emails lately and I’m sorry for being unable to respond to the questions, I’ve been really busy. One person asked said that there were too many terrible players for him to beat the low stakes sngs. As I havent played them for awhile I don’t really know how tough they are, but my guess is too many bad players cant really be a bad thing. This is one of the many dumb/weird things that especially live poker players do, they talk like people are terrible then they say they don’t want to play with them. For example, I was playing 2 5 nl with some friends at the borgata a few weeks ago, when i play that low, i sometimes play pretty loose and terrible. My friend with me plays far worse than me. More than one of the “regulars” made some absurd offhand comment about how the players at this table were too loose and terrible for them, and they needed a table change. Several others left. I honestly dont understand how people so illogical can live in the world and get by. I mean, I sometimes have trouble ordering pizza, and yet people with so little thought are capable of living rich full lives. Note that I’m not making fun of casual players that choose not to devote much time to understanding poker, the players I speak of are borgata REGULARS that utter those sentiments.

I just read a book called Moneyball which profoundly interested me. I have a big blog coming up with my thoughts on it when I get the time, but for now, anyone that can get their hands no this book should read it, even if you don’t like baseball.  Anyway, my laptop is dying so I’m gonna start one of my books. Everybody start reading Moneyball now!